


in the shade of amaurot

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Gen, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22739674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: He was no master at phantom creation; Lahabrea had been the last of that.He still tried.He needed something, someone, to roam the streets of his recreated city.And one by one, he put his fallen brethren into the streets as he remembered them.
Relationships: Igeyorhm & Lahabrea (Final Fantasy XIV), Loghrif/Mitron (Final Fantasy XIV), Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch & Hythlodaeus
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	in the shade of amaurot

Few learned it, fewer mastered it—and the sole master of phantom creation had sworn to never again conjure up another phantom until the day the star returned to its rightful state.

Perhaps this had been an ill-conceived venture from the beginning, but his heart lurched and his stomach turned as he walked once and always familiar streets with nary a soul in them. He had banished every school of fish, had driven out the fauna of the deep and the local undersea flora all alike. His own mind borrowed the nagging, condescending,  _chastising_ tone of Mitron’s voice as it listed the repercussions for the balance of this ecosystem, and Emet-Selch banished all these thoughts with a wave of his hand. Ecosystems would persevere, even if they were as broken and unimpressive as this sundered star’s. He was merely the predator at the top of the food chain and he was staking his claim to this  _territory._ The sunken ruins of a long-gone but not forgotten capital… Amaurot.

But the streets in this painstakingly delicate and intricate recreation— _web of deceit,_ his mind snarled at him, borrowing the harrowed and exhausted and all too furious these days of Lahabrea this time around—were empty. The inhabitants were dead, sacrificed, sundered; only he, Lahabrea and Elidibus remained.

But he could make the memory of a city soar and rise and pretend it was alive until the real people returned.

Phantom creation had never been his strong suit. Aether and the Underworld twisted and shone and churned at his behest back in Amaurot; the Architect was a sorcerer without equal. But no phantoms wandered the Words of Emet-Selch, nothing of the sort whisked about the buildings he and his department created. No, phantoms in Amaurot were where most of the visions of utter beauty were given form and function, standing beside creatures that dazzled and sparkled with how delicately designed they were. The Words of Lahabrea, a menagerie of stunning beauty and the haunting presence of phantoms all at once.

He tried to conjure up a phantom, moulded its features as carefully as Lahabrea ever did. A spark of familiarity, a wave of water-aspected aether woven together with a gust of wind-aspected aether to preserve the illusion of a living creature rather than a phantom. The theory he knew, the theory he executed—but the more time he spent on it, the more he realised that there was no life in it. There would never be life in it even as he furiously wove more and more aether into it, to the point of nausea as he continued forging a phantom. Inside this recreation of his home, as his heart grew heavier and heavier and  _heavier,_ Emet-Selch roused a phantom from the aether of the deep.

It stared at him with familiar blank eyes as his homesickness near brought him to his knees. He choked back a howl of frustration and heartache as he put the finishing touches on it; neither a phantom nor something that was worthy of a proper title. Robes, mask—slightly askew and ruffled, just as the mess of hair beneath the hood would have been. But the eyes that once always shone with amusement of some sort, sharply intelligent and annoying and yet another facet of  _home_ that not even this recreation of the streets that haunted him in his dreams and nightmares alike…  the eyes were blank now. Not a phantom. Just a shade of their former self.

This shade of Hythlodaeus would be the first to wander these streets of a shade of Amaurot, without a sense of direction, without a meaning to its existence as Emet-Selch all but ran away from it.

The others would need a purpose. Later.

This one… this one he would have to let go. No matter the fact that it was a shade, a cheap copy, a faint echo of the man he once knew and called his closest friend… he could not destroy it. Perhaps if he pestered Lahabrea enough he could get the means to perfect it, to give its meaningless existence at least some sort of guidance.

* * *

“Forget it,” Lahabrea hissed through bloodied lips. “These hands do not create. This mind does not create. No more—not until we stand in Amaurot once more.” He coughed, bloody and wet and disgusting as his vessel broke and shattered and struggled to breathe as it drowned in its own blood thanks to its torn throat. Another mortal war. Another mortal casualty.

Emet-Selch watched him disengage, his hair unkempt and ruffled and blood that should not be there running out of his mouth there against all odds as his soul remembered that it could not be undone by injuries in borrowed bodies. The blood vanished but Lahabrea remained, his grey eyes ablaze and burning with feverish rage.

“And neither should you, Emet-Selch.”

* * *

Form, function—the others had it. One shade wandered aimlessly, its eyes much less vacant now than they had been a hundred mortal generations ago. The creatures that Emet-Selch had driven from the ruins were called the Ondo now, a race of nonsensical fishmen that had sprung up after the end of the world, not under Zodiark’s dark guiding hand but under Hydaelyn’s blinding glare. They dared not venture closer to these ancient grounds, and Emet-Selch watched with an emotion he could not quite name as his first shade stood at the edge of Amaurot and stared further into the darkness of the undersea.

The rest did not notice.

Why did this one act as if it were alive? Why did this one’s empty eyes suddenly light up not with amusement but with  _pity?_

* * *

It was pity once again that drove him back to this phantom city full of shades.

Pity for that poor unfortunate fool torn apart by a Warrior of Light. Without thinking about it Emet-Selch sculpted the fool as he remembered her. Robes in perfect order save for the soil adorning her sleeves and most of the lower part. He conjured up a pin of flowers that she had raised with great care before Terminus had devoured all their attention and energy, faintly glowing stalks and bouquets of fauna rising in Akademia Anyder as the Words of Halmarult were given their former master once again. A shade, a phantom, breathing while their original lay dead until another shard surfaced. Here she would raise her flowers without the impending end of the world until the star was back to its former glory.

A purpose, imprinted upon the shade’s heart.

_ Raise your fauna  at the Words of Halmarult  without impending doom as you should have. _

Blank eyes that had no reason to be blank, a gentle smile on her face as the shade became aware of itself. She leaned down with that same vapid, empty smile that made him long for home as he recalled it more than ever and brushed a finger against his cheek. She spoke in a long-forgotten but never gone tongue that burned on this mortal vessel’s tongue strangely as he answered her. Merely a new concept for testing, a smaller vessel that would help with the cave system exploration that burned in the back of the mind of Nabriales. She merely laughed and said that perhaps the choice of outfit would be detrimental to that.

He bade her farewell saying that the outfit in particular had not been his design. Another flighty fancy of his ever-malevolent Chief who worked against him for fun as much as he ever did whatever he demanded.

The lie stung, but the shade ate it up. She left, rows of flower pins on her robes in a way that she would have never worn in Amaurot.

Mortal fancies.

He did not move to wipe these pins off. That was what she had kept on herself no matter what, even in the moment of her untimely demise. Halmarult yet not, and this shade was influenced by that sundered misfortune-addled version of her.

* * *

“Are you quite alright, Emet-Selch?”

He knew that this shade would be talkative. She had always been, her curiosity and drive to learn everything she could her own undoing in the end. Consumed by one of Lahabrea’s infernal creations; for someone claiming to never create again he had been awfully eager to pass his knowledge on to mortals and soon Eikons ruled the lands.

Emmerololth had come across one such Eikon, slumbering in the heart of a seat of knowledge. Her curiosity had been twisted to greed as her sundered soul sought to prove herself worthy of praise, and her undoing had been none but her own fault.

But he could not help but remember her and raised a shade in her image, perhaps as a homage to the Holy Queen that had marched endlessly and tirelessly in the pursuit of more knowledge not to hoard it but to write it down and pass it on to the others. Despite all that tireless marching she never once failed to see the changes in her comrades, always stopped to ensure that they were alright. Her sundered soul had had hints of that, but greed had made her turn from her comrades as she ran ahead and got herself consumed by an Eikon.

He nodded at her, slowly, tried to wear a smile that she would find reassuring before remembering that he did not smile at people. Damned mortal customs were poisoning his mind, and he shook his head.

“As well as I can be in this silly concept matrix’s clutches, Emmerololth.”

_Pursue the knowledge you crave but never forget the kindness you had to leave behind in the wake of doom._

The shade did not seem convinced but he repeated that he would be better the moment he could leave this pointless changed appearance behind. That satisfied her for the time being.

* * *

Melancholy had never suited him—those had been Loghrif’s words once, twice, many times. Transcendent and untouchable, a calm yet fierce moon shining over the roiling tides of the sea; Loghrif oft was found sitting in the high halls of the Words of him and his predecessors, his speech gentle but their intent painful, hurtful at times.

Melancholy had always suited him—those had been Mitron’s words once, twice, many times. Forehead pressed against a fish tank in the Words of Mitron and a grin on his face as he turned to chastise Emet-Selch for skipping work by seeking him out; but while his scolding and scathing words had stung like seawater on open wounds many times they were not once meant to be harmful.

These shades rose side by side, hand in hand; the tides did not change without the moon and Mitron without Loghrif, Loghrif without Mitron, might as well have been a  shark without teeth, a bird without wings.

They had died apart, their sundered counterparts. Emet-Selch, busy playing the emperor Solus of the Garlean Empire on the Source, had met Mitron precisely once in the week that had been a painful year on the First. Eyes dead, shoulders slumped, hair covering his face when normally he tried to keep it out of his sight. Loghrif had fallen to the Warriors of Light on the First, torn apart by infernal light and yanked away. Emet-Selch knew a dead man he saw one, and Mitron following suit in a furious blaze that guttered out as the Warriors of Light gutted him came as no surprise.

This light that had killed them would swallow this world and this recreation alike, but Emet-Selch still thoughtlessly roused shades in their image. Bringers of Chaos dead and slain on the First, but here in this recreation of Amaurot they would not be torn apart so brutally by Hydaelyn’s mindless puppet warriors.

Twin purposes on twin shades’ hearts.

_Breathe life into the Words of Mitron and the Words of Loghrif, hands entwined without impending doom or anything to part you, as you always should have._

They, too, had been affected by their sundered soul’s counterparts. Mitron had his hood down when back in Amaurot he would have ever dared, not even when dove into aquariums to deal with his creations. Loghrif was slightly hunched over as he nodded at Emet-Selch, a sudden preference for his left side as the right side had been blasted into pieces before his soul crumbled, according to Mitron’s dead voice as he recounted Loghrif’s defeat at the hands of the Warriors of Light.

He watched them leave, listened to their pointless shade prattle about Mitron’s latest creation before they had been consumed by their work against the end of the world. Bipedal sharks of some name or another, a joint effort of the Words of Mitron and the Words of Lahabrea—lacking in the beauty that the latter employed but no less impressive for how well their two normally barely compatible creation styles wound up working together.

“I told you, Chastiser—the Speaker is more bark than bite,” the shade of Loghrif muttered as it leaned down a little to put its head against the shade of Mitron’s head in a slight gesture of affection. “Perhaps once he returns we can work together as well.”

“A collaboration between the Words of Lahabrea and the Words of Loghrif would be a sight to behold, indeed,” the shade of Mitron chirped in reply, a tone of voice that the sundered counterpart had never quite taken. Another flighty memory of Amaurot, given purpose in this recreation of home that did not mend his homesick heart.

Emet-Selch stared after them almost forlornly.

* * *

Perhaps a bit over the top, he mused as he clenched his fist to twist the earth-aspected aether into form. Too outlandish, too different. Gold and silver and gemstones in many different colours adorned the robes of this shade as he painstakingly tried to remember his original features only to remember that he was vain enough to change their appearance to what he had looked like, applied to the much smaller vessels of mortals. Vanity could be a weakness, it could lead to arrogance that would see one undone.

It had, in this case. Nary a moment had passed here, the Flood of Light was rising and very slowly consuming parts of the far east on this star by now. The Warriors of Light were begged to stop it—Emet-Selch was free from his duties as Emperor Solus. Not even a heartbeat had passed, and they had gathered to stare in silence as Elidibus forwarded the message that the Source’s Chosen had learned of a way to crush and shatter their souls rather than maim and maul and send them back to the Rift to lick their wounds. Lahabrea had been licking his wounds for quite a while, his duties done by Nabriales instead. He took off, his blazingly angry existence gone in a heartbeat as he followed Igeyorhm to sow chaos now that Nabriales had been _crushed._

A gemstone sewn into the robe right above the gold trim shattered as Emet-Selch unclenched his fist and he hissed in displeasure.

The Sundered had all been affected by mortal dalliances. Nabriales had been an egocentric bastard at times, yes—but he had always wound up putting the needs of many before his own needs, no matter what. Whatever fancies he adorned himself with he shed them willingly and perhaps the fastest of them all if it could help alleviate something.

This shade, mask in perfect position, hood perfectly aligned to frame his face in a way that showed that even underneath the Convocation mask he had what most people would call a rather handsome face. Vain, yes, but never vain enough to forget the others.

Sundered as he was, vanity had turned malicious. He wanted to outdo everything and everyone; just as Emmerololth’s tireless search for knowledge had turned into greed, Nabriales’ vanity had turned into arrogance. It had undone him in the end, likely grovelling and begging for his life as arrogant mortals who valued only themselves were wont to do.

The shade of Nabriales gave him a small smile has he clasped his hands over Emet-Selch’s open one. “I appreciate you trying to fix my robes, truly I do, Emet-Selch. But you needn’t spend your own energy to aid me. I shall fix this as soon as I return to my offices.”

_Go, do as you always did; let those gemstones shine as your heart did not ever since we failed Amaurot and Our Lord._

* * *

Bloody footsteps that glistened on the stone ground. Even underwater, all thanks to the aether given form, something like this was possible. He hung in her grip like a lifeless puppet, grey eyes vacant and platinum blonde hair ruffled and dipped in blood. Blood that ran out of the corner of his mouth, seeped through the tear in his robes that should have been left by a large claw attempting to kill its creator but more looked like the clean slice of a broadsword across Lahabrea’s shoulder and chest.

Shades, the pair of them, created not even a week after N abriales . Mere moments passed on one star, entire generations passed on the other; and in the short while between Mitron and Loghrif’s demise and the death of Nabriales  on the First , Lahabrea and Igeyorhm’s attempt to usher in the Rejoining had been met with violent opposition  over the course of a year on the Source.

I geyorhm found herself vanquished in the same way that Nabriales had been, at the hands of the very same Warrior of Light had had violently beaten Lahabrea back into the Rift before. Lahabrea, meanwhile, finally paid the price for his own blind rage that saw him teaching mortals what he should have never taught them. Hubris saw the Speaker undone as a Primal devoured him for sustenance and the Warrior of Light saw to the Primal being slain. Just as all the others before, Lahabrea and his unsundered soul had been torn apart and flickered out as the Lifestream reclaimed the soul piece b shredded and mangled piece. Unlike the sundered, however, there would be no shard of Lahabrea waiting for its ascension on another star.  Gone, destroyed, flayed and weathered, humiliated as the blinding rage finally guttered out like a candle in the wind. It left a bad taste in the back of his non-existent mouth as he stitched them back together from his memory. The Speaker, coughing blood as he told the Architect that he was through creating. The Martyr, defiant yet caring, standing in front of the catastrophe she wrought.

Now here their shades were, the Speaker drawing wretched wet breaths and whatever of his skin that was not caked in blood was shining with a thin layer of sweat.  Still, he managed to fight himself to crack a strange grin at Emet-Selch while Igeyorhm hoisted him up properly so she could drag him to get these wounds dressed. Her eyes shone with a worry that they never did when it came to her sundered counterpart; her oft expressive self turned into an emotionless wretch wrecked by guilt as she did her duty. The Thirteenth followed her sundered soul around like the phantoms the Speaker created—but this shade was free from that guilt, clearly more concerned with the bleeding Speaker.

“Damned… Archaeotania,” Lahabrea’s shade wheezed, his breath rattling strangely and wetly enough that it took Emet-Selch a moment to realise that the shade was _laughing._ Not the joyless, furious and hysteric laugh he laughed ever since the Sundering—the laugh he lost when Terminus approached Amaurot and all his research turned out to be fruitless even as he worked himself to the brink of death a hundred times over. “Emet-Selch, we… w-we will have to… capture or elim… eliminate it, sooner rather than l-later.”

Igeyorhm protested, brushed his hair out of his face as she all but threw his arm over her shoulder to drag him away properly.

_ Your hearts belonged to your research, you were married to your jobs; do them now, with the boundless energy that you lost so long ago, both of you. _

“We will, indeed,” Emet-Selch whispered in reply, acutely aware of Elidibus calling for him in the back of his mind all of a sudden. “But see your wounds mended first, Lahabrea. The… the last thing you want to do is take to the field with… injuries.”

The shade had passed out, its head and limbs swaying uselessly, lifelessly, as Igeyorhm dragged him off to seek urgent care.

* * *

He leaned over the rail slightly, his real counterpart’s smile on his face as it should have been from the beginning. Cheap copy born of despair and longing and homelessness or not, Hythlodaeus was an optimistic being, Amaurotine Chief of the Bureau of the Architect or shade haunting a recreation of Amaurot that slowly started fraying at the edges now that its creator was gone. Slain, crushed, vanquished, torn apart and scattered to the seven seas, consumed by the Lifestream that cracked and wretchedly tried to recover its balance in this unbalanced world—by the creature that the other shades treated like a lost child. To their eyes this person was, stature too small and demure, limbs too short and weak, mind focused on things other than the whims and fancies of creation and debate.

Only Hythlodaeus saw what the others missed; a distracted mind recreating a living being as a phantom giving him self-awareness and a certain edge of self-importance. He knew he was not what everyone else thought he was, the others were not what they thought they were. They were all phantoms risen from the mind of a now dead and infinitely lonely being with a heavy, guilty mind. The other shades and their purposes—Emet-Selch had given all of them one, a purpose that burned even now that the spell was fading. And though it might take mortal centuries for them to vanish entirely, their days as phantoms of Emet-Selch’s mind were numbered. Where he had failed them or perceived that he had failed them, he had given their shades purpose.

He watched the Warrior of Light, his dearly departed yet fiercely alive new and old friend, muttering to themself and then repeating the question louder. Their voice was strangely clear, it rang through the halls of the public access building to Akademia Anyder.

“I never took Lahabrea for a scholar….”

“A strange child, are they not?”

Hythlodaeus straightened up a little and turned his head—then bowed it to greet Nabriales. Though he was a fake as well, he knew thanks to Emet-Selch’s distracted mind that the Majestic had not adorned himself with this exuberant amount of glittering gemstones back in the real Amaurot.

“Are you questioning Emet-Selch’s choice to invite them to Amaurot, perchance?”

Nabriales shook his head, the gold-rimmed cloak he wore saying softly because of the motion and clinking ever so slightly against the rail they were leaning onto to watch the Warrior of Light ask some more questions about whatever they had witnessed inside Akademia Anyder. “No, heavens forbid. I may not have seen him in a long time—but the first time in quite a while he seemed like his old self when he submitted their name. I would quite like asking him about them next time I see him… Have you, perhaps, seen the Architect?”

For a short while the only topic on these recreated streets had been the doom that had befallen them. Hythlodaeus had personally recounted the tale of what had happened on their darkest morrow to the Warrior of Light below—but the rest of the shades had forgotten the end days of Amaurot just as suddenly as they had started speaking about them. This shade of Nabriales was no exception to that rule, of course; all of them had a duty imprinted on their minds in this perfect little recreation. Hythlodaeus had not.

“His office at the Bureau remains as vacant as before. His duties have taken him quite a ways away, I’m afraid,” he whispered. A lie, a perfect little lie—and every shade believed it. “Believe me when I say that I will inform you posthaste the moment he returns to Amaurot.”

“Me, and who else?” There was a good-natured grin on his face as Nabriales gestured at the floor below. The Warrior of Light had left by now and was instead replaced with the other shades of the Convocation.

Lahabrea’s hood had come off, mask askew and face pale. He had not recovered from his injuries quite yet but he was not going to let them stop him; the desire to research that Emet-Selch had imprinted on this shade’s heart ever on its mind. Igeyorhm, too, was driven by that same desire to research all she could, though she more often than not seemed strangely attached to Lahabrea these days. A small oddity that had occurred somehow because of whatever their real counterparts had said or done, Hythlodaeus mused. Halmarult had her face between her hands, moaning about something about her plants being trampled by this energetic child. Mitron was fuming over the loss of the twin sharks that had been a collaboration between his department and Lahabrea’s, calmed only by the presence of Loghrif—all while Emmerololth loudly lamented the fact that they had missed Emet-Selch’s most recent protege.

“Collectively, all of you of the Convocation,” Hythlodaeus all but sang out and pushed himself back. “Myself quite included, though I doubt not that our esteemed Emet-Selch will report to me first and report to you all never, as far as his whimsical and fleeting nature is concerned.”

“Whimsical and fleeting? Are you perchance a tad touched, Hythlodaeus?”

Shades with one purpose, and he lacked one. He would forever see the seas beyond the perceived limits of Amaurot, would forever hear the whispers of the fishmen called the Ondo where the rest of the shades did not thanks to their given focus. It had disgusted him in the beginning, seeing as he deemed himself not a living being, unworthy of existence when it was clear that every shred of knowledge that Emet-Selch had granted him was no longer holding true. But as he realised now, it had all happened for a reason. Lahabrea had glumly mentioned that Emet-Selch had voiced an interest in phantom creation and that he was going to teach the Architect as soon as he returned and he himself was better.

The shade of Lahabrea would never recover from its injuries.

Emet-Selch would never return to this recreation of Amaurot.

Those were truths he knew, and while they all forgot that they had waited for their end once and should be waiting for it again, he waited for them. He would be the one ringing the bells one last time as the last bits of aether returned to the deep seas, he would be the one waiting for the end for each and every phantom in this city.

“Perhaps I am a tad touched, Nabriales,” he said eventually, a joyful tone in his voice as he turned to wander the streets that did not know they had been recreated according to the memory of a man who had slaughtered millions. Even he, the shade that _knew,_ could not deny that the Convocation had been in the wrong all along, whatever it was they did beyond the limits of this fake city he could not leave for he was as fake as it.

“But for a concise answer, I am afraid you will have to wait for Emet-Selch. Then, and only then, can I tell you how precisely I am touched.”

Emet-Selch, who would never return.

Amaurot, which was fated to fade.

There was no better end for a lovingly recreated city full of phantoms in the image of the once living that had been under the supervision of an Architect of Darkness.

**Author's Note:**

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